By and by these fishermen's stories attracted other people to those regions, and men began to go there not only to fish, but to trade with the natives; and gradually it came to be quite a general custom for the traders and fishermen to build a few warm huts and pass the winter on the shores of some sheltered bay, instead of going back to France at the first sign of cold weather. And here they learned many interesting things about the new country, and which made it seem quite worth living in. They learned how the Indian could start from the coast in his bark canoe, and, by means of those large streams, the Kennebec, and the Penobscot, and the lakes that they formed, reach easily the smaller rivers of Canada and so float down to the great Hochelaga or St. Lawrence; thus going from the Atlantic coast, through hundreds of miles of dense forest, to the large Indian villages of Hochelaga or Stadacona. Sometimes the traveller would have to carry his canoe from one lake to another, always a short distance, or around the rapids or waterfalls of the narrowing river; but with these exceptions the journey was made entirely by water. And as the Indians of Canada and those of Maine were constantly trading with one another, the whites soon saw that a country where distant places could be so easily reached, and whose fine forests, and rich furs, and excellent fisheries could be had for the taking, was not so poor after all, and that perhaps they might as easily draw gold from the sea, or find it in the sweet-scented woods, as by wandering through the marshes of Florida, or on the banks of the Mississippi. And so, little by little, the French king began to believe that it would be a very good thing for France to own and settle Maine and Canada, or, as all the northern part of America was then called, New France; and in 1604 Sieur De Monts, a Huguenot nobleman, sailed from Havre de Grace for the purpose of making a French settlement in Acadia. With De Monts came his friend Jean de Biancourt, Baron de Poutrincourt, also a Huguenot, who wished to find a new home in America, where he would be free from all the religious troubles that were constantly vexing him in France. Samuel Champlain was also one of the company, and as he had been on several voyages before, and knew the country and people better than the others, he was looked upon as a very important member.